Chart Toppers

Listening to Radio 1 in the mornings on the way to work has given me an unusual familiarity with the pop charts, something I’ve been missing since the days of Top of the Pops on Friday night. Generally I try not to fiddle with the radio while I’m driving (to prevent one of those Casualty-type accidents with the distracted driver and the pheasant/dog/small child), so listen with grim determination through songs I don’t like much, and end up knowing all the words.

Will someone please tell Tinchy Stryder that ‘misleaded’ isn’t a word? His latest song, a heart-rending tale of a girl who doesn’t want her boyfriend back because he’s a gutless worm, has the worm in question apologising for his dastardly deeds: ‘I’m sorry I misleaded you, pretty lady/ I’m sorry I mistreated you, pretty lady/ I’m sorry that I hurt you, pretty lady/ And all I need to know is: can you take me back?’ Don’t do it, pretty lady! I would’ve kicked him out for grammatical offences alone. Points for sheer boppiness though; I usually sing along even through the seething rage of my inner English Language enthusiast.

Red Light Company’s ‘Arts and Crafts’ earns the prize for Most Pathetic Song Premise of the Week, however. Look at the video – some nonce with stringy blonde hair and a posh accent warbles about never being ‘good at Ahhrts and Crarfts’ while a roomful of coiffed models fall asleep around him, presumably because anyone who feels moved to write a song about arts and crafts must be the most soul-sucking personality-vacuum in the known universe. On the YouTube comments page some indignant fan says maintains ‘it’s not really about arts and crafts, it’s a metaphor’. For what? Something ELSE involving sugar paper and PVA glue? Twit.

Alas, the craft straw sculpture went wrong again

Lily Allen’s new song is brilliant, though.

(On the subject of Casualty, why did they bother showing the back story of the Accident of the Week character for the first fifteen minutes of each episode? Didn’t matter whether they were walking to school, raving at a party or in the middle of a blazing family argument: as soon as they appeared you knew they were doomed, and started guessing the most likely way for them to end up mangled. ‘There’s a sharp knife on that table…He’s definitely going to fall through that conservatory window…’ Hardly promoted audience-character bonding when you knew they’d be unconscious in five minutes. Ooh, and remember when that nice man-nurse got pushed over the railing by the escaped psychopath? Tense times. I’ve got that siren-based theme tune in my head now.)